Monday, September 7, 2009

New subdistricts in Bangkok

Only through monitoring the edits on Wikipedia I became aware of the fact that in Bangkok the city administration created new subdistricts (Khwaeng, แขวง). Five subdistricts, each the sole subdistrict in the corresponding district, were split, effective August 3, raising the number of subdistricts from 160 to 169.

I tried to find some more background on these new subdistricts, but wasn't able to find much. Prachachat gives the approximate boundaries of the new subdistricts, whereas from a Thai blog posting I could extract the date of being effective to be August 3. And finally, the report in Naewna suggest that till next year all of the districts with a single subdistrict will have new subdistricts., which means the seven districts Phra Khanong, Phaya Thai, Din Daeng, Suan Luang, Saphan Sung, Bang Na, Bang Bon.

The population of Bangkok's subdistricts varies greatly, the lowest is 2392 (Chana Songkhram, Phra Nakhon), and the median value is about 35000. Yet 10 out of the 160 subdistricts have even more than 100,000 citizen.

Population

Khwaeng

Khet

164570

Si Kan

Don Mueang

147466

Khlong Kum

Bueng Kum

145671

Bang Sue

Bang Sue

139322

Din Daeng

Din Daeng

116067

Suan Luang

Suan Luang

115685

Wang Thonglang

Wang Thonglang

102963

Bang Bon

Thawi Watthana

102122

Samae Dam

Bang Khun Thian

100474

Bang Na

Bang Na

100377

Anusaori

Bang Khen

In italics are those subdistricts already split now.

Now I wait for the announcement in the Royal Gazette, the last ones were announced in December 2003, just three days after the creation became effective. And also for the geocodes for those cases where it has more than one new subdistrict in one district, so far the CCAATT list from DOPA has not been updated.

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Changwat, Amphoe, Tambon

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